1987 Pontiac GTA

In reply to pinchvalve:

As far as I know, the only difference between a Turbo Trans Am and my car is the turbo Buick V6 and a 200R4 trans. Mine had a TPI 350 and a 700R4 originally. I forget the exact numbers but yes the TTA was probably faster. I'm pretty sure Turbo Trans Ams are rare enough that they don't show up on craigslist for challenge money like my car did. The GTA was mostly a trim package on top of a Trans Am, but the WS6 suspension package came standard on the GTA while it was an option on the normal Trans Am.

Sweet. Cool color. I assume that it would be white.

Turbo Trans AM also had the 1LE suspension and brakes on it. And yes it definitely was faster than a TPI 350. The lighter V6 also helped in the handling department as well. Definitely hard to find one, too few made.

I still like the GTAs, wouldn't mind having one down the road. Good luck with your project.

I got excited and started this thread way too early as usual. Before this gets any progress there's an ugly green Dodge truck taking up the best work space on the property, so that has to get stripped for parts and hauled off before I can move my car up there. And I really need to get the shop in order like I said so my "10 minutes here and there when I have time" doesn't turn into "15 minutes of looking for an 8mm socket then getting angry and walking back up to the house".

NICE!

There's a similar color GTA in front of a house near me. It was a daily driver up until a few years ago, but has moved sporadically since and has a leaking tire.

Good luck!

I can hear the Whitesnake coming out of the Delco cassette deck from here. Nice score!

So I'm still in the planning stages here, engine is in pieces, trying to decide which direction I want to go putting it back together. Still thinking about megasquirt but I realize I'd probably have to do it as a piggyback to avoid losing all my dumb 80s electronic dash gadgets. How does one go about tuning the stock GM setup in event that I decide It's pointless to do a complete rebuild of an SBC for this car and end up with a stock engine? A reliable 325-350hp is probably all I'd ever want out of it.

Go over to thirdgen.org

Go to diyprom

See you in a month.

Or, stock l98.

I also think digital dash is standalone. It can be done on s10....

In reply to Dusterbd13:

Oh right, the section of TGO I avoided last time I did this because my car had one of them silly controlled fuel/vacuum leak boxes.

In reply to Chadeux:

The "tuning" for TPI involves sending your ECU to someone for reprogramming, or buying one that's already been done...although that may not work well depending upon the specs it was set for.

I don't think it would be too difficult to setup the dash to work off megasquirt. The speedo is run from the trans so that shouldn't change. The coil is just a single wire off the distributor, so again that should be ok. Depending on what oil pressure/temp and coolant temp sensors megasquirt uses, it may affect the readings on the dash, but you could possibly add a resistor to the circuit to get it back in range, find/build a small circuit to provide the needed output from the sensor's input, or just have two sets of sensors - one for MS, the other for the dash.

You wouldn't have fuel mileage or some of the other functions for the other display, but the basic dash gauges should work fairly easily.

I feel like I'm going to end up putting this engine back together close to stock because that's the quickest way to get it where I can actually drive the car. More power would be fun I'm sure but I've driven a stock L98 car before and it was far from boring.

Stock cam, stock compression, miniram or lt1 intake, longtubes, port and polish, and a canned stage 3 tune from pcm of nc should be plenty fun.

Dusterbd13 wrote: Go over to thirdgen.org... see you in a month.

Yeah, that's about how long it takes to close all the ads...

Yeah I have an adblocker on, GRM is the only whitelisted site currently.

Nice find

Depending on the final use the stock 350 is very good for running around on the street. Able to light up the tires from a standing start just by stomping the go pedal. I had an 89 TA with a 305 TPI and it was a blast on the street. According to TGO around $200 buys the stuff needed to burn your own chips and the software is out there similar to what is used to do ODBII, just change the numbers in the cells that control either fuel or spark.

Here I am, rock you like a hurricane.

Cool car!

Was looking a wiring diagrams and saw the water temp and oil pressure gauge sensors are separate for the ones for the ECM. So except for the speedo should not be a problem with the dash if you do decide to go with a different ECM.

In reply to zordak:

Cool. Thanks for that. I've decided I'm going to wait to confirm there actually is a problem before I try to fix it.

IIRC all the 350 cars had 2.73 (10 bolt)or 2.77 (9 bolt) gears. 3.42 (10 bolt) or 3.45 (9 bolt) would wake things up nicley without touching the motor. I took my 305 TBI from 2.73 to 3.27 and the difference was amazing.

Www.gearhead-efi.com

Should be a bit easier than thirdgen.org

In reply to Dusterbd13:

Yeah I just stumbled into TGO and found a recent thread asking if you could make SBC headers out of LS headers. I also still haven't gotten over the guy from the originality or whatever section that has his original tires in storage.

zordak wrote: Was looking a wiring diagrams and saw the water temp and oil pressure gauge sensors are separate for the ones for the ECM. So except for the speedo should not be a problem with the dash if you do decide to go with a different ECM.

Yes, on the TPI engine the coolant temp sensor that goes to the computer is the one close to the thermostat. The one on the left side of the motor is for the gauge. The one on the right side of the engine is the fan temp switch for the passenger side fan. That's why you'll see different numbers at the gauge and when datalogging.

Gearheadotaku wrote: IIRC all the 350 cars had 2.73 (10 bolt)or 2.77 (9 bolt) gears. 3.42 (10 bolt) or 3.45 (9 bolt) would wake things up nicley without touching the motor. I took my 305 TBI from 2.73 to 3.27 and the difference was amazing.

There's also 3.27 for the 9-bolt which came stock on 350 IROCs. Other Camaros with G92 also had 3.27s in their 9 bolts. But I'm not sure how it works with the Pontiacs. Did WS6 9-bolts get 3.27s?

AClockworkGarage wrote:

Dusterbd13 wrote: Go over to thirdgen.org... see you in a month.

Yeah, that's about how long it takes to close all the ads...

TGO kinda sucks with all the interruption ads and interlinks unless you are signed up and logged in. Then most of that stuff goes away.